1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus and method for detecting highlights of a media stream, and more specifically, to an apparatus utilizing video features to decide video highlights, utilizing audio features to decide audio highlights, and then deciding highlights according to both video and audio highlights.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The prior art on automatic extraction of highlights of special programs relies on video features or audio features. For example, sports highlights are obtained through color detecting of the scene. A general movie, however, needs a method that considers both audio and video features to obtain movie highlights accurately.
For obtaining highlights through detecting video features, prior arts utilize dividing a frame into several color blocks and comparing these color blocks with a reference frame to identify scenes. As the highlights usually appear at specific scenes, the candidate frames for obtaining the highlights are reduced. For obtaining highlights through detecting audio features, since a peak level of audio data is evaluated, if a plurality of peaks exists in a certain short time interval, an overlapped interval may be extracted as the highlights, and therefore the aim accuracy of the highlight detection is not good.
Furthermore, a structure of considering both audio and video features together to detect movie highlights is not yet available. An apparatus for automatically detecting highlights of general movies through audio and video features together will significantly improve the quality of audio-visual programs.